All 14 of us are squeezing in the elevator. I made sure, as usual, to sit near him. Today, too, he is looking into his phone, so cool I can't breathe. I am facing the elevator doors, a row of people in front of me, another behind me. The thought that I stand right in front of him flashes through me, right when I feel him cling to me, one hand tentatively on my left hip. My knees give out, all of me is throbbing, beautiful dreams are made of moments like these. On the 5
th floor I see him getting off the elevator with two other colleagues. Wait, then who's behind me?
(Translated by Andreea Denisa Dinu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year I / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In April 2022, the group has 8,175 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
